I have started planning this build starting the day 3080 FE was announced. At first I thought it would be nice to create a decent looking build with AIO and GPU on air. While I have built a lot of computers for myself and for some friends but I have never tried even using AIO so I am completely new when it comes to water cooling. After a week or two of research and looking at all the nice picture of custom cooling builds I decided to try and go completely nuts and do my first custom cooling build. And because I am doing it for aesthetics reason I decided to go with Hardline Tubing. So lets see what I ended up with as the full parts list for my build first. I ended up spending about 5600(ish) USD, I stopped counting.

Main Parts -
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero
- Memory: GSKILL Trident Z Neo 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 3600 CL16
- Storage: 2x Corsair MP600 Force Gen4 2TB NVME SSD
- PSU: Corsair HX Platinum 1200W 80+ Platinum

Case Components
- Case: Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic (Regular, not XL)
- PCIE Riser: Phanteks Vertical GPU Bracket
- PCIE Riser Cable: Linkup PCIE Gen 4 PCIE 90 Degree Riser Cable

Air Components -
- On Radiator: 5x Lian Li White UNIFAN SL120 (Pull, into case)
- On Side: 1x Asiahorse White Matrix (3 120mm fan as one single unit, exhaust out of case) (DO NOT BUY, one fan Broke, I will switch those out to Unifans too)

Water Components:
- EKWB Crosshair VIII Hero Monoblock
- EKWB RTX 3080 Special Waterblock Silver Edition
- EKWB Quantum Reflection PC-O11D D5 PWM Distribution Plate
- Corsair Hydro X XR5 360mm Radiator
- Corsair Hydro X XR5 240mm Radiator
- EKWB CryoFuel Mystic Fog

Fitting and Tubing:
- Corsair Hydro X 14mm PMMA (Acrylic) Hardline Tubing
- 16x Corsair Hydro X 14mm Silver Fitting
- 7x Corsair Hydro X 90 Degree Rotary Fitting
- 8x Bitspower 45 Degree Rotary Fitting
- 2x Bitspower 5mm Offset Fitting
- 8x Bitspower Various Length Extension Fitting

Cosmetic Items:
- 5x Phanteks Halo Lux
- 2x Chinese no brand 38mm ARGB LED Light Strip
- 4pin ATX Custom Cable
- 8+4pin EPS Custom Cable
- 12pin 30 Series FE Custom Cable

Now with the final parts out of the way. The road to get here wasn't so easy. At first instead of the Dark Hero mobo I had the Crosshair VIII Hero mobo, and because of aesthetic reasons I decided to go with a full white build. I painted a lot of things white. Including motherboard/Radiator/Halos and got White Dominator RAM.

However the first 5950x I got was faulty. It can't even run stable in BIOS default. After some debugging I realize the problem was indeed the CPU and most likely have to do with the DVFS table AMD has in AGESA that determine the baseline frequency and voltage lookup was too aggressive. Some more corner case silicon (the one I got) might have problem running it there. I also noticed that this is not something only I was seeing, plenty of people are seeing the same thing and even on AMD community forum, there are quite a few people having the same problem. I decided to RMA the silicon for replacement from the vendor.

Fast forward a while I found 2 other people having the same problem that I know. They did not want to return the silicon since they need the PC to function ASAP (I still have my old build so it's not a problem for me). I realized that the problem with those silicon is that indeed it can't handle some frequency at AMD's default voltage programming. So by enabling PBO2's curve optimizer and go positive on voltage count solve the problem for both of my friends. One of them was stable at +5 and the other hand to go all the way to +15. And by then my RMA'ed 5950x replacement got back to me, and this time the silicon seems fine, I can even undervolted to -15 pretty stable.

Meanwhile I got a Dark Hero and a set of Trident Z Neo as part replacement also. I also decided to go with silver theme instead of white. I discovered the magic of anodization removal. I stripped the back anodization on my painted Halo and then the entire Dark Hero anodized aluminum. I also stripped the Trident Z Neo heat sink so it's also silver. I also decided to modify the mobo branding a bit and removed all the "Dark Hero" text and Asus logo, and created my own

By now it's almost Christmas and my last item, the EKWB 3080 FE Special Block is finally shipped and I was lucky it got delivered to me the day before Christmas. I finally was able to put together the build during my Xmas break.

After the build finished I had problem deciding color theme of the build. And after a day or two of trying, I finally decided to go with purple and blue theme and named my build Purple Aurora.

I have attached some image, including:

- Final image of the Purple/Blue theme
- AIDA64 Status Monitor setup
- Some image of my mods and the build before final setup

Next up, I need to setup my desk and station to also match this. I have this planned:
- Monitor 1: LG Ultrawide 34BK95U (34inch 5120x2160) On the bottom
- Monitor 2: LG 4K 144Hz 27GN950 (27inch 3840x2160) On the top (Back ordered, coming at end of Jan 2021)
- Monitor 3: LG 4K 27UK850 (27inch 2160x3840) Vertical On the left

Mouse Keyboard -
- GMMK Ice White TLK
- GMMK Wireless O

Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading this as this journey has been really fun. I have already started purchasing part for another build that I kinda want to do for fun. I want to do an open build in the Barrowch Mobula case (not sure if I can call it a case hah).